Three teachers appeared before the Foothills School Board on Wednesday presenting projects they've done with the help of Classroom Program Innovation Project, or CPIP funding.

Joanne Schoneck teaches math at Foothills Composite High School and she demonstrated how she had used the grant she received to purchase Chrome Books for the students who then used them on a daily basis to work on math problems and interact with her through videos she had done that were individually targeted.

Tori Maciejewski and Christine Crane teach at Westmount in Okotoks and they talked about their project where the students in grades four and eight, were challenged to determine just how clean the water in the Sheep River is.

The Assistant Superintendent of Learning Services Pam Rannelli says the projects selected are aimed at finding different ways to engage students....

"Themes that I'm certainly seeing is student's voice in their learning and being more involved in the learning and then more engaged in their learning," she says. "It's not to say you have to have Chrome Books to do that, that's one way, but then the other group took their kids out into the community and just posed questions and had then exploring and collecting data."

Projects included photography at Oilfield High School, using peg boards and cardboard and tape at Joe Clark school and structured writing at Senator Riley Middle School in High River.

"I think it's all in being innovative and how you design learning so it really had meaning for them (students) and they can explore different ways to learn , rather than just that direct instruction," Rannelli says.

he says they are seeing that a it's working and now the challenge is figuring out to to scale up those innovative ideas so that it becomes the practice, rather than just something a few teachers do.

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